6. Find a Suitable Place for Studying
It is essential to have a special place to study. The best place to study is a personal desk and a room that is separate from the rooms that are used for other purposes.
It is best to have a study desk in the corner of the room so that you face a wall. Being in a closed environment can be very effective in staying focused. Remove anything that distracts you from around your desk, such as posters, books other than textbooks, music players, and your phone.
Put all the things you need for studying on the desk so that you won’t have to get up all the time while studying.
The light of the room should be sufficient and a combination of white and yellow. For example, a regular lamp for the study lamp and a fluorescent lamp for the room or vice versa.
The desk lamp should be at least 30 cm away from the paper and be positioned to the left of the desk if you are right-handed and to the right of the desk if you are left-handed.
It is better to always sit right behind the desk, meaning all of your joints have a 90 degrees angle. Never lean when studying. Don’t put your hand under your head. Do not sleep on the table and always sit up. Also, get up from your seat whenever you feel tired. Take a few steps inside the room and do some stretching exercises, then study again.
Even if you don’t have a personal study desk, sit on the chair and read because you get tired on the floor sooner. Never, never, never lie down and study in bed.
All of the above are ideal conditions for study, and not all of them are necessary. Remember that there are people who have achieved the best in conditions that are not very desirable. Studying is the most important part which should not be lost in details.
7. Consider Mental Fatigue
It is quite natural that sometimes the human brain forgets things because of fatigue. It never means that you are not intelligent. So, instead of getting angry, try to deal with it.
Imagine your brain puts the layers of information on each other in the order of freshness. So, the new information is put at the higher levels, then the lower layers of information become obsolete and cannot be easily accessed. So, they respond to your call with delay. Thus, reviewing is the only way to prevent this.
8. Make Studying a Habit
Generally, if you plan to study for certain hours of the day, you will get used to it very quickly. Without a specific schedule, there may never be time to study. A good way to do this is to record time in a notebook.
9. Set a Goal
One of the main reasons why people fail to achieve their goals is that they are usually considered unattainable. This can be solved by proper planning and management.
Just try to figure out the difference between your short-term and long-term goals. Develop and keep in mind the long-term goals as dreams. But devote your daily life activities to short-term goals. For example, “getting rich, becoming an engineer, and becoming a doctor” are long-term goals. Each of these requires paths that you must reach by the pursuit of short-term goals like a college degree with good grades. An even shorter-term goal could be studying from 2 to 4 tomorrow.
10. Despair Is the Enemy of Learning
People who constantly blame themselves for their slow learning will always be stressed even if they have good progress and high learning abilities. People who are confident in themselves and their speed of learning, even if they are less intelligent and talented than the previous group, achieve better results because they do not spend their energy on worrying. Rather they make progress in a slow and steady manner.
Related post:
Some Tips for Studying Smarter (Part One)